Two employees of a Stapleton nursing home were arrested after stealing a credit card from a patient’s bedside drawer and using it at several locations on Staten Island, according to a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan. Denard Brown, 44, of St. Mark’s Place in New Brighton and Benedicta Charles, 44, who lives at...
Peter Timmins writes: From a recent case note (S v Health Service Provider PrivCmrA 19) issued by the Federal Privacy Commissioner on whether reasonable steps were taken to protect personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure: “The Commissioner considered whether the steps taken by the health service...
Two laptops containing confidential medical information about Houston-area patients were stolen from a car parked at a Galleria-area store today and authorities are asking for the public’s help find them. A man who serves as a consultant for a local hospital parked his car at the Best Buy store at 5133 Richmond about 10:30...
Jordan Rau and Patrick McGreevy report: Hospitals and other health facilities will face harsh new penalties if their employees snoop in the medical records of patients, under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after privacy was breached on celebrities’ files — including his wife’s — at UCLA Medical Center. Schwarzenegger approved two bills...
Jaquetta White reports: The names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates and Social Security numbers of more than 1,700 independent agents for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana were accidentally included in an e-mail sent to the insurer’s agents last week. An e-mail about plans to update an internal operating system contained a spreadsheet...
Steve Nowottny reports: EXCLUSIVE: Four NHS trusts in five have lost patient data or suffered a data security breach since the beginning of last year, Pulse can reveal. Our investigation reveals the true scale of confidentiality breaches within the NHS, with trusts reporting more than 1,300 incidents since January 2007. Figures obtained the...
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today charged Treatment Associates of Victoria Inc., with violating the Texas Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act. According to court documents, the San Antonio-based drug testing and rehabilitation facility violated a state law that requires businesses to protect their customers’ sensitive information. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG)...
Matt Wilkinson reports: An investigation has been launched into how a file loaded with confidential information on vulnerable mental health patients was picked up by a shopper in Oxford. A member of the public found the folder — lost by Bromford Housing Group — at Templars Square shopping centre in Cowley. The folder contained...
ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS reports: At hospitals, as at Tiffany’s, ruby-colored bracelets are far preferable to amethyst. New York’s 11 public hospitals are at the forefront of a national movement to standardize color coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions, in which purple — the color of amethyst — means “Do Not Resuscitate.†Red, or...
A Cedar Rapids chiropractor is facing nearly 40 counts of fraud, identity theft and money laundering. Douglas P. Dvorak was charged in an indictment filed this week in the U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. The indictment alleges that 45-year-old Dvorak submitted false Medicaid claims for chiropractic services he never provided. It also says...